bloom quilt

07/09/2012

Thank you for all of your sweet comments on the last post, I've did exactly nothing last week and let my to do list get dusty whilst I lazily la dee daahed on my sofa. That and a couple of others things have completely perked me up for the coming week.

Other things being - Attending the London Modern Quilt Guild meeting yesterday, eating homemade biscuits and seeing not one but two versions of my Bloom quilt. Charlotte's is above and was just jaw droppingingly lovely made all up from various Denyse Schmidt prints and appliqued onto a very pale blue background. She decided to go the extra half mile and made a fifth ring of dresden petals (my version had just four) and made it a whopping 100" square. She also hand quilted the entire thing.

Kelly also has a Bloom in progress and is well on her way to getting those rings appliqued down.

Aren't these colours just wonderful together?

To top off my weekend, I got my copy of the special Christmas in July issue of Australian Homespun magazine. I have an interview in this issue and was delighted to be described as an artisan on the cover! There is also a seasonal embroidery pattern from me inside this copy, you can see it there in the bottom right hand corner. Not just that but there is also a chance to win one of five copies of my book and an embroidered quilt journal. Not bad!

04/12/2012

I'm so happy this one is done - I really enjoyed thinking it up and pulling it all together. The seed for this quilt began last September when I made my double dresden pillow. I knew right then that I wanted to go for a triple or even quadruple dresden but it took a while in the thinking, planning and making stages.

As well all having the big bloom of a dresden in the center I also wanted to have a lot of space around it and made a show of the quilting on the background fabric to draw the eye back to the center again and again by echo quilting around the outer edge of the largest dresden with lines 1" apart. Took a while but it was worth the trouble.

03/28/2012

Ive been busy sewing (or sowing) up the seeds of - you know that quilt I'm making, the one with the dresden explosion in the middle of it. I've had to pick up my game and speed up with it having found out that the third sofa of our new set is going to be arriving tommorow. Which means my available floor basting space is about to be sliced in half (leading to a slight panic of how I'm going to baste my future projects). I decided to change my original choice for the flower centre from white to pale green but I'm not liking how its looking so that may get changed back after it's been quilted. Other than that I am LOVING how it's looking so far.

I'm also loving the surprise early birthday present I got yesterday - an Ipad 3. I always ask my family not to buy me presents but sometimes they ignore me and come up with gems like this. This little baby is getting a bit of a workout and is a highly distracting bit of gadget with fun stuff like the photo booth function (above) - I keep trying to put it down but it's hard :)

03/26/2012

Its been a blooming-ly lovely weekend around these parts. Picture the scene, hubby and the girls are out, the sun is shining and I got to spend a largeish chunk of time out in the garden handstitching dresden rings to my backing fabric - BLISS.

I got quite a bit done on my bloom quilt - 2 rings down and 2 to go. This is how its looking so far, held up for display by my trusty helper miss c, who will be helping me out as photography assistant from now on because miss a has now employed herself as my sales assistant by sending my email patterns and re-listing them in the shop for me (if you bought a pattern last week and got a double smiley face in your message, that was her work). I'm certainly not complaining about their wanting to help.

Although miss c's suggestion that I make this into a summer dress for her is not the kind of help I was after.

Miss a meanwhile spent a little time in the kitchen unleashing her creativity in the form of arty cake decorating for a friends birthday party.

And before you ask, I really did enjoy washing up all 99 bowls of icing colours.....

03/22/2012

My house is awash with dresdens, picture the scene - it is like the sea of dresdonia has come crashing through the doors. Sharing my living space with several squillion drezzies is not a bad place to be however, they make for nice company, are polite and behave themselves at all times. So you can see, the beginnings of my bloom quilt are well underway and coming along nicely thank you very much.

This flood of dresdens is also giving you a nice little bit more of a peeky into the world of Sew Stitchy lucky peeps. See how right you were?

It is all about the sewing with this line, hand sewing, embroidery, spools, pins and more.

These are four of my favourite prints - I just love the two prints on the left together so much it is making me squeal.

OK better get back to stitching the sea of dresdonia into circles because much as I keep asking, they won't stitch themselves.

03/21/2012

So yep you are all pretty much spot on with the contents of Sew Stitchy, you honestly could have designed this line for me :) And just so you know, there is a little squirrel in there.

Precisely five minutes ago I had an idea, the idea was to tell you all about the making of and writing up of the pattern of the quilt I'm working on today. The thing about this quilt is, I've written up the entire pattern and made the templates and all the illustrations FIRST. Yep! that's before I've made the quilt itself. The reason for working so confusingly backwards is because I designed it to go in the new Moda catalouge or playbook as it is known, so it had to be ready almost before I got the fabric to sew it with. Working on this little number began over Christmas. All through the festive season, I was making my own templates from scratch and sizing and resizing them to fit inside each other neatly. Then I made a mock up of all four dresdens to double check my maths and make sure everything worked (see exciting blue fabric dresdens above left). The quilt is called Bloom and is going to be made up of four dresden plates appliqued one inside the other to make up the most ginourmous dresden you have ever seen and by gosh it has been a lot of work.

So now begins the exciting bit, using my pattern to actually make the quilt from..............................Sew Stitchy.

If any of you fancy stitching along side me, I'm adding this pattern to my shop today - listing is up, you can find it here. It'll be nice to have some company if anyone fancies playing along :)